Amazing news: Thawks = apparently being shown on a channel called Big Centre TV! I hadn't heard of that one; I hope it's one of my numerous Sky channels. In any case, good for them!!! I remember being informed here that the original negatives had gone walkies, but LWT had kept nearly all the episodes. Goodness, when this section of the forum was most active, I didn't yet know my dear Napoleon & Kitty existed; now, my glorious decade with them = over. The years are passing too quickly!

I don't know if reincarnation = true; if so, I have to be resigned to the fact that in the next life I'm more likely to be introduced to the dreary old 1960s' Anderson shows, than to Thawks. But then, I could be reborn into a tribe in a far-off jungle somewhere, and therefore not be able to make head nor tail of any sci-fi. Right, I'll stop wittering for a while.

That would be BB8. He plays a similar role to R2D2, but he doesn't talk in a way that most of the characters (including you!) will understand. S'good film though, quite a lot of humour in places. I'd watch it as soon as you can, spoilers are bound to start cropping up although people don't seem to be blurting them out just yet, which is helpful if you haven't seen it yet!

My difficulty with it was how it made it as though the Return of the Jedi never happened.
The rebels were right back to square 1 and the New Republic, which is a major entity in the Star Wars universe, never seemed to have existed.

Indeed everything that was established (maybe not 100% officially) like the Thrawn trilogy, which is probably the only spin-off from the original films that's as-good-if-not-better than the films themselves, was overwritten by this film.

But that should come as no surprise since JJ Abrams hijacked Star Trek as well and overwrote what made it great in the first place.

At least it looked and felt like Star Wars in many places but the prequel films managed that to more-or-less the same extent.

At least NewWars has in common with NewTrek a swarm of awful-looking, terribly-designed ships and vehicles.
I now place greater value on the contrived BS that the later prequel films fed us in particular, such as the ARC-170; a deranged crossbreed of a dragonfly and an X-Wing and others.
At least they managed to import, from the original Star Wars, the prototype X-Wing design by Ralph McQuarrie to use as an 'improved' version.
It was not an improvement.
Every other ship in the film was dire.
In NewTrek, the only decent ships were the non-hero ones; the Kelvin, Newton and Armstrong.

Ah, I do love a good starship design. The Dreadnought was just gratuitously OTT in Into Darkness; just too big. Rather like Excelsior with the transwarp drive thing. In the original series there's no way the Enterprise would have survived the poundings it keeps taking, and what's with all the atmospheric flying?! Ah, well, young minds, new ideas. This is a nice reference for the Abramsverse ships (I wasn't familiar with the Newton and Armstrong classes you were quoting but I get them now). http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/schem ... _ships.htm

I'd have to see the Force Awakens again to get a better feel for the ship designs, but I certainly had some issues with the whole "Yes, we've just taken a dive from orbit in a damaged single man fighter, but hey, we're OK!" attitude to ship durability. Clearly got some great structural integrity fields.

As for the premise generally, and without spoilers, the Resistance is different to the rebellion - it was allied with the Republic and its power base, so in a sense the First Order is closer to the rebellion in the original trilogy but had a much better start having sucked up Imperial resources. Clearly there were some post ROTJ battles, otherwise how did Jukka acquire all those wrecks (unless part of the settlement was to have some star destroyers scrapped or something?). I suspect they might try and fill in some gaps with stuff like Rogue One and the like. Interesting how just losing Vader and the Emperor meant the Empire as a whole collapsed, however, surely they must have had a pretty decent fleet kicking around?

And of course there's always that ridiculous "Hmm? No, no, we're just building a really big telescope out of a planet. Nothing to see here. Go about your business." I mean, seriously? No-one noticed them building that? I mean, a Death Star you might be able to create in deep space, sure, but this was on a big planet! Rather implies the First Order actually held territory, doesn't it, because they've clearly got something approaching a fleet. I haven't really read any of the comics or anything around the film in order to avoid spoilers, so I guess I don't have a feel for exactly how things worked out in the interim...

Now you mention that, I remember the Klingon Battlecruiser from the 2009 film was a good design but only glimpsed in the background for about 2 frames on the bridge simulator viewscreen.
So the good ships that were introduced are under-utilised. The bird of prey from the second film is not a fabulous design.
This prototype doesn't quite nail it either for me but it is nicer:http://www.pierre-drolet-sci-fi-museum. ... f-prey-bop

One thing that strikes me about action damage in Star Trek is that the use of the shields and the inability to really damage the star model of the series made that whole topic more realistic.
In TNG, you wouldn't see the Enterprise battle-scarred and bits broken off even though parts of it would stop working.
That, to me, has a certain realism and they pushed it completely the other way in Voyager, especially Year of Hell when they had CGI to alter the ship however they wanted.
That was a good thing for them to do because it was memorable and new and they pushed the story-reset button afterwards.

The Dreadnought ship in Into Darkness is suitably menacing but it has no design qualities that are admirable.
An enemy like that should also be smooth and attractive but this was neither.

*** I'm afraid we're entering into maximum spoilers here... ***

The raygun-concealed-in-a-planet was a bit of a sticking point in my acceptance of the film at the time.
I know they had to have a one-up-manship on the Death Stars but in the novels, you have the sun crusher which is a little-enough ship that can blow up stars.
That, to me is more terrifying and more realisable to portray on screen. But never mind.

So, the planet-gun fires out a giant ray without killing the space-Nazis on the surface who are looking at it.
It then went halfway across the galaxy for all we know, breaking up and homing in like an ICBM and took out a number of planets.
So it's a planet-scale cluster homing laser. TVTropes.com should have fun with that.

The reason that the Alliance didn't find it earlier never entered my mind because I was busy trying to make sense of what I was looking at.

I just caught part of the programme It's Not Rocket Science, and it looks as if talking household robots may well be available before too long. A presenter had a chat with one called Pepper; sweet, albeit not as gorgeous as the zeroids.

It was suggested that the robots might one day learn to reproduce, and decide to get rid of us...Well, 35 would probably like to reproduce with Zero!